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Booktalk
#1
Imagine
that you are a thirteen-year-old girl and your only worry in the world
is pleasing your parents and maybe improving your spelling grades on school
assignments. Then, imagine that in the short span of a few weeks
your life changes so drastically that your worries now include being a
convicted murderer sentenced to die. Such are the worries of thirteen
year old Charlotte Doyle.
The year
is 1832. Aboard the ship Seahawk, the lone passenger, Charlotte Doyle
is making the trip from Liverpool, England to her home in Providence, Rhode
Island. Charlotte finds herself caught between the psychotic madness
of the captain and a plotting revengeful crew. Charlotte, a young lady
of gentle upbringing starts her journey determined to behave in a way that
would make her parents proud. Befitting her status as a lady, Charlotte
distances herself from the crew, which looks to her as if they were recruited
from the doorstop of Hell. Instead, she makes an effort to befriend
the captain, who is, as she sees it, her equal, someone she can rely on,
someone she can trust. Or is he?
Once
the Seahawk is underway, Charlotte realizes that things are not what they
seem. Mysterious and frightful events begin to occur with regularity
and soon the ship is enveloped in a mood of suspicion and danger.
A stowaway on board attempts to rouse the crew into mutiny but the captain
puts it down. In doing so, however, the captain kills the stowaway
and from here on out things take a turn for the worse.
The mutiny
incident reveals a side of the captain that causes Charlotte to doubt his
intentions and motivations. Yet at the same time she halfway believes that
the captain is justified in killing the stowaway. After all, wasn’t he
just defending himself and his ship? Charlotte also begins to doubt
her assessment of the disgruntled and revengeful crew. Was she wrong
to think of them as deserving of such harsh and cruel treatment by the
captain? These questions gnaw away at her and the tension mounts
until the fateful night when a hurricane hits the Seahawk. In the
confusion of the storm, a crew member turns up dead--dead from a knife
in his back--not any knife, but Charlotte’s knife.
With
all of the evidence pointing to her, Charlotte finds herself convicted
of the crime and confined to the rat infested brig while awaiting her fate,
which is to be hung from the neck until dead. Can Charlotte save herself
and pin the crime on someone else? And even if she could would anyone
aboard the Seahawk ever believe her? What really happened aboard
the Seahawk that night? Find out the fate of Charlotte and the others
aboard the Seahawk and read The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. (MaryFrances
Thomas whthomas1@earthlink.net)
Booktalk #2
Before I begin relating what
happened, you must know, my name is Charlotte Doyle and though I have kept
the name, I am not the same Charlotte Doyle I once was.
It happened during the summer
of 1832 aboard a ship called the Seahawk. Although I was warned not to
board the brig Seahawk on June 16, 1832, no young girl of good upbringing
would dare dream of disobeying her father's orders. And Papa had left orders
that I should sail on the Seahawk to Providence with two other families
that had booked passage. I had been told only that these families included
children (three lovely girls and a charming boy). So when you consider
that I had but dim memories of making the crossing to England when I was
six, you will understand that I saw the forthcoming voyage as a lark.
When I arrived at the dock,
the other families were not there, so I traveled alone. Once I boarded
the ship, I realized that there was no turning back. Once upon the sea
I discovered myself alone among a dozen rough crewmen, the only passenger
on a voyage from Liverpool, England to Providence, Rhode Island. Within
hours of the ship's sailing, a dagger was placed in my hand by the Seahawk's
cook, Zachariah. It's for your own protection, he says. Soon I overhear
murmurings and mutterings among the sailors, who resent my presence. I
find myself caught between the madness of the ships master, Captain Andrew
Jaggery--and the rage of a mutinous crew.
All too soon I learn the need
for the dagger, because I learn to my horror it's a weapon to be used against
me.
